This invention relates generally to social networking system user interfaces and, in particular, to mobile and tactile interfaces for presenting social networking system information.
Social networking systems capture large volumes of information from various sources that are of interest to users. For a given user this information may include, for example, social data related to the user and her social connections, news related to the user's interests, entertainment selected for the user, and updates from the user's social connections. Previously, users interacted with social networking systems through interfaces that were displayed on personal computer (PC) screens. However, an increasing number of users interact with social networking systems through mobile devices having limited display areas, such as smartphones, tablets, etc.
Because the volume of social networking system information is large and continuously generated, it is often impractical to display this information on a mobile device using interfaces adapted from PC interfaces. Conventional PC user interfaces display information using thumbnails and buttons that are relatively small compared to the total user interface area, but are poorly adapted to the smaller display areas of smartphones. The small screen size of touch screen smart phones makes it difficult to navigate and select data in interfaces that are designed for larger display areas. In addition, PC-based interfaces designed for operation by mouse and keyboard do not often migrate well to touch screens and other tactile interfaces commonly used by mobile devices where touch and gestures are the primary mode of interaction.
Further, the large volumes of social data presented to users by a social networking system often require users to navigate through many pages of data before identifying the data of interest. On mobile devices, where display screens are relatively small, navigation through pages of data is either too slow to effectively traverse large quantities of data or fast but not precise enough to efficiently interact with specific items in large lists.